FORESTVILLE — Named the new superintendent of the Schuylkill Haven School District recently, Shawn Fitzpatrick’s life has undergone major change, even though he is still driving the familiar orange No. T102 358 modified at Big Diamond Speedway.

In fact, the Pottsville resident is surrounded by change in the pit area.

While Fitzpatrick’s car remains, brothers Tim and T.J. feature new cars – another 358 modified and a sportsman, respectively, while Jesse Krasnitsky, who also works out of the nearby team’s garage, has turned his roadrunner into a street stock.

“There’s nothing systematic about it,” Shawn Fitzpatrick said of the new team alignment. “Everybody gets together and says, ‘Hey, let’s first of all remember why we do this. We do this for fun and, if at any point, it’s not fun anymore, we don’t do it anymore. So I don’t want this to be stressful on anybody. Let’s go out there and have fun. Let’s work together as a family.’ ”

While that cooperation has turned the Fitzpatrick racing stable into one of the consistent presences at Big

Diamond, it reached a new level after the 2016 season.

It began when Shawn and Tim, a successful sportsman driver, decided that the team should field two modifieds.

“The deal with the modifieds is that it’s a lot harder to win, obviously, but at least when you make the feature, generally speaking, it covers the tire that you burned off,” Shawn, who placed second in last Friday’s 358 modified feature, said. “You’re going to race on a little bit better racetrack than the sportsmen do, so it’s not as hard on the tires.”

Shawn also said that Tim is no stranger to a modifed. The Branchdale resident has one modified feature win at Big Diamond.

The brothers went looking for a car and found a 2015 Bicknell chassis, but only after a wasted trip.

“So we drove all the way down to Maryland — Ocean City, Maryland — to look at a car,” Shawn said. “Spent 4½ hours on the road each way. On my ride home, I called Doug Manmiller, who was in Orwigsburg 15 minutes away, and I said, ‘If you still have that car for sale, we’re going to come and look at it.’ We were able to work out a deal and get him in that car.”

With that accomplished, there was the matter of Tim’s sportsman, but long-time roadrunner driver T.J. offered a solution.

“T.J. said, ‘Hey, what are you going to do with the Teo (chassis) car?’ I said, ‘Well, we’re going to sell it,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’d be interested in buying it,’ ” Shawn said. “So he’s bought it, and we gave him a good car that I am confident I can help him with.”

That purchase altered T.J.’s own plan to change his Chevrolet Nova into a street stock and use Tim’s sportsman engine in it. Instead, the Tremont resident said he became a rookie all over again in a new division.

“I think they were a little taken back by it,” T.J. said about the suggestion to buy Tim’s sportman. “I think they were for the idea, but they were a little surprised that I wanted to do it.”

The choice leaves Krasnitsky without a potential teammate in TJ, but the Port Carbon resident said he stayed with his plan to change his Nova into a street stock because that’s what his own budget allowed.

“That’s an all brand new motor,” Krasnitsky said of the Burns and Yost engine in his No. K-2. “I was going to take my roadrunner motor apart and use that, but it’s such a good motor that I didn’t want to take it apart. You have it there for a backup in case I need it, God forbid, but that’s a brand new motor and that’s where the money was this year.”

Despite the different cars, Krasnitsky said the cooperation between the drivers and teams remains.

He said, “A lot of the stuff that applies to the sportsmen and modified, like setup wise, some of it can float over to the street stock also. Those guys have been racing for years in street stocks and whatever, so they know what to do.”

That includes shock absorbers. While Krasnitsky drives with more conventional shocks, Tim Fitzpatrick has been building shocks for the team’s other cars for the past two seasons.

Shawn said, “For the most part, that’s a huge savings because you had to send them out every time. Not only are you paying somebody to repair them, you’re paying to ship them. Now we get the parts shipped to us and he goes through them. It’s worked out real well for us.”

All of the moves produced a busy offseason for Fitzpatrick, who begins his new job at Schuylkill Haven in July.

With the focus on the new job and racing, something else had to change. Fitzpatrick was a play-by-play announcer for high school sports at his race team’s major sponsor, T102 FM. He said he is giving up that job on a regular basis.

That meant his call of Minersville’s PIAA Class AA girls’ basketball championship at Hershey was his final broadcast for the foreseeable future.

“I feel like Peyton Manning,” he said, mentioning the former Denver Broncos quarterback whose last game was a Super Bowl victory. “I went out at the top of my game with my alma mater winning a state championship.”

Admission: Adult general admission, $25; Seniors, $23; Children age 12-and-under and active military personnel with identification, free.

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